the master cannibal

ONCE I've finished writing my unauthorised autobiography, intend to turn my attentions to compiling an anthology of erudite graffiti. I haven't yet decided on the title (I'm torn between The Scrawl of the Wild and the more Orwellian Homage to Scatalogia), but it will definitely be a wide-ranging celebration of gross (and grossly- underrated) form of social communication that's capable of speaking simultaneously to the highest and lowest faculties in us all. The section on modern art will be particularly well-stocked, with cubicle- based observations on Impressionists ("they're only in it for the Monet") and Surrealists ("Dada wouldn't buy me a Bauhaus"), but pride of place will be given to an anonymous critique so succinct and effective that even our own Brian Sewell would find it hard to beat: drawing of two cubes, beneath which runs the simple legend, Balls to Picasso.

I'm sure that Pablo would have approved of this graffito, because his love of playful mischief has been evident throughout John Richardson's spellbinding C4 series, Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death, which reached its conclusion on Sunday evening. You can count the number of bona fide geniuses I've met on the fingers of a mitten (though you'd need an entire glove factory to count those who thought they were geniuses), but all of them have had a Tourette-like fondness for scatology, and the great Spanish modernist was clearly the same, especially in his use of visual puns. "The sea urchin is placed as if it's a kind of vagina dentata," Richardson told us, pointing to painting of a disjointed woman, while two strategically located molluscs were "a casual pun on genitalia", and there was plenty more in that vein.

Honestly, with such Rabelaisian talk turning the air blue (when this wasn't even the artist's blue period), not to mention Picasso's curious approach to female anatomy, a gentleman hardly knew where to put himself.

Richardson's chief success in this series has been to make his subject appear accessible, without ever seeming ordinary, and the sheer humanity of the mature artist was marbled throughout this final programme. Trapped in occupied Paris in 1940, Picasso claimed that only apathy prevented him quitting Europe for the safety of America, but in truth his messy private life (which included one wife, several mistresses and offspring) made it impossible for him to leave, even though emotional baggage is the one accoutrement on which airlines impose no weight limit. Instead, he stayed in his freezing attic, painting grim still lives that looked more like still deaths (because "Picasso's art always reflected the circumstances of his life"), until the Liberation finally came, and his paintings recovered their former sense of joy. Partly because peace had arrived, but also because he moved to Antibes (a favourite stomping ground of mine). Who wouldn't be happy and inspired while living and working there?

As one seminal period gave way to the next, I was reminded of Picasso's contemporary, Igor Stravinsky, because both men possessed a similar ability to change their style repeatedly throughout their careers, without ever compromising their identity and individuality. And just as the musician had explored the possibilities of neo- classicism (recomposing 18th-century works in his own manner), so the artist spent his later years "cannibalising the works of the old masters", studying everything from Vel/zquez to Van Gogh, then "Picassifying" them, often in an unrecognisable form.

LIKE our own Frank Xerox, humour was an integral part of this cannibalisation, and I only found myself alienated from his world view once: when we saw him cheering loudly at a bullfight, as some poor creature was ritually tormented to its "noble death". Sorry, but the only thing about that ignoble sport that gets me cheering is the sight of a freshly-gored matador, hurtling through the air.

"Like most geniuses, he was not formidable," said one of his former mistresses, and many of those who work in television could usefully learn from that observation. It's the second-rate, not the first-rate, who tend to take themselves far too seriously, and when I first heard that this documentary's series director was Waldemar Januszczak (a man who claims to be an artist, although his installations in the Glasgow Museum of Art suggest otherwise, and who once moaned after I compared his name to a Polish optician's eye chart), I feared the result would be worthy, dour, heavy-going stuff. So three cheers for John Richardson and Channel 4 for making a primetime series that was as accessible and spirited as its subject. Perhaps one day I'll even ask Mr Richardson to become the curator of one of my unfinished projects, a museum devoted to the heads and arms missing from the statues in other museums. Hey, don't knock it. On second thoughts, do knock it.

That way, there'll be even more pieces for my curator to collect.

Copyright 2001
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